As voters hit the polls today for the last municipal elections of this century, a few outcomes seem clear... And throughout the state, voter turnout is expected to hover below 50 percent -- typical for recent non-presidential, non-congressional elections, but way down from off - year highs that once approached 90 percent... "Since the end of the Cold War, there's been a growing sense that government and politics really don't matter -- that the decisions that affect them are being made in markets," said Philip Klinkner, director of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. "People spend more time paying attention to New York and Wall Street than Washington and Capitol Hill."